The Victoria Memorial

Victoria Memorial Kolkata

That’s the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata, a memorial for Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom which was built between 1906 and 1921. It’s located in downtown and it’s just about 1km away from the hotel I’m staying.

The weather was looking good this morning and I took a short walk along streets to reach this famous landmark in Kolkata. It’s actually a museum inside. Majority of the exhibits are century old paintings of famous landmarks and places in , together with some canons and guns used by the Bengali soldiers last time.

Nothing much really interests me, except to snap some photographs from outside as cameras are banned inside the memorial.

I’m now in my final leg for this trip. 3 more weeks in Kolkata (hopefully they don’t ask me to go the city nearby) and I’ll be home and ready for my next dive trip.

And after that, it’s going be a looooong 6 months away.

July 6, 2008 | Filed Under Photography, Travels | Leave a Comment 

Where On Earth Is Durgapur?

When people asked me, So, where are you now?

I replied, Durgapur.

And the next thing I knew was, Where on earth is that place?!!

It’s in state in , about 160km north east Kolkata. To be precise, 23°29′N 87°19′E or 23.48, 87.32.

I was playing around with Google Maps just now, so I thought I would just try to embed the map into this post and see how it shows up.
View Larger Map

June 21, 2008 | Filed Under Travels, Web | Leave a Comment 

Durgapur - 5 Weeks to Go

3 weeks gone. 5 to go in .

I arrived in Durgapur 1 week ago from Kolkata. Just in case you’re wondering where the hell is this place, it’s quite near to Kolkata. 160km to be precise. It’s a small steel industry town whereby the town comprises of 1 shopping complex with some small shops surrounding it and steel factories.

I have a car and a driver, so moving around is not that inconvenient. There’s nowhere to go actually besides hotel, work and lunch at the shopping complex daily. They have a small Spencer’s (Malaysia’s equivalent to Tesco, Giant & Carrefour) 5 minutes walk from my hotel. That’s where I get my daily groceries for dinner and weekends.

However, the food varieties are quite limited though except for rice and curry powder. A can of Ayam brand tuna costs RM10, Safcol RM16, and pretty much nothing more. There’s also Ayam brand’s Salmond Wasabi Tuna. I wonder what’s that?

Life’s been pretty much the same everyday when you’re in projects. Everyday feels the same, even for weekends. It goes like :

Work — Lunch — Work — Dinner — Online + — Sleep

..and the routine will repeat again and again for the next 5 weeks for me.

If it’s not because of the free Internet the hotel has and , I would sure be bored to death every night. There are 100+ channels on the TV, but most of them are Hindi shows/movies. Those channels which are my favorites like Discovery, Nat Geo and History Channel, they speak in Hindi! After , they would be Wimbledon and Tour de France until I get back home, so things are not so bad indeed.

June 16, 2008 | Filed Under Travels | Leave a Comment 

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